When I started exploring this idea of the community and reflecting upon the development of the valley and wider district I began to realise that there was another community that had formed itself, again a North River community, just now it was a community centred around this property. For over 20 years now, the North River name has been our brand. Tens of thousands of clients have spent time here and some of our clients go back to the very early days of the horse trekking venture, as it was then. Those clients have seen the ideas evolve for the property and witnessed me growing and evolving as well. It has also been a privilege to witness the development of these clients.My realisation of a community centred around North River started to really catch my imagination, who are the members of this community, where do they live, why are they a members etc. And then the big question...what makes a community?My next realisation was that everyone that has ever been here, the tens of thousands of people, have all left their mark in some way or other. By the same token North River has probably left a mark on most people that have experienced the place and what happens here. Anywhere there has been an interaction either between people or people with our horses or their interaction with the natural bush and river environment there has been a chance to grow and evolve. I know from my view point, all of these interactions have helped me develop too, as a human being and helped me to find my way. I think everyone that has ever been here has had an opportunity to teach something and to learn something as well.People have come here from next door, from down the road, from around the corner, from the length and breadth of NZ, from over the ditch and from nearly every country in the world. People from all walks of life, many jobs, careers and professions and from a vast array of cultures. The draw....the horses and the environment of the valley, the river and the bush. What brought many people back here again and again... the horses, the valley and the people and way that all worked together in harmony.So the North River community is not just the valley, it now spans the world, the cultures, the classes, the languages, the religons and is of all ages. I thank you all for your continued support, and your sharing of yourselves in everything that is North River. You all make the community.

When I first moved to this beautiful valley in the early 80's there were 8 dairy farms making a living off the land here. They were all family farms and we all knew all of the family members and were ready to help each other out when anyone needed a helping hand, whether that be hay making or pulling a stuck tractor out of a bog. We even had the ocassional road get together for a pot luck dinner.My telephone number then was 7X, one of 4 on a party line. When I wanted to make a call I had to pick up the reciever first to listen if anyone was on the line, before cranking the handle to ask the operator for the number that I required. This could a frustrating time if the nieghbours were on a long call. When I recieved a call the phone would ring LONG-SHORT-SHORT-LONG twice! In my house I also heard the morse code rings of the nieghbours when they got calls as they heard mine when I was called. Even with this old fashioned system of telecommunication we had some of the conveniences of the modern era. We had call transfer and call waiting courtesy of the operators and also call follow you around the area as sometimes it didn't matter whose place you were at the calls could come. I even heard of a baby sitting service, where the phone was left off the hook for the operators to check in while the parents popped out to the nieghbours. It also seemed that the operators knew everything that was going on in the area.As a small group of residents and farmers we challenged the Whangarei District Council on the condition of our road and we also challenged the New Zealand Post Office (as it was then) to get some action on our poor telephone lines, as everytime we had so much as a heavy dew the telephone cut out.In 1984 as a recession in farming cut very deep and very hard for farmers, it seemed that we as a group of farmers along with others in the area took an initative to become quite radical and outspoken. At the time if we sold a sheep to the freezing works we actually got a bill, it cost the farmers money for sheep to be sent for slaughter and sale. We decided to stage a positive protest in the main street of Waipu (it was State Highway 1 then). With about 40 sheep slaughtered, frozen and cut into steaks we stopped traffic with 25 tractors driving up and down the main street holding up the traffic and handed out not only free sheep steaks but a one cent piece with each steak. We figured it would be better to give to a consumer rather than a multi national company. We then went on to lead a 7000 strong protest march on Parliament in Wellington. After that it was to Whangarei for a funeral march to symbolise the death of farming in NZ.The protests didn't change anything at all.In fact during this time the Government said that "no competent farmer will be forced from their land". Their definition of competent - meeting your mortgage repayments! Interest rate reached 20% during this time. So we entered survival mode and just survived, we couldn't even sell, as our land was now worth very little even if someone could be found to buy. During this time most of the farming wives found jobs off the farm and even some of the farmers found extra work off the farm just to survive.What happened next (about 15 years later) in our valley, for those that survived the recession, was that land values rose to a point where farmers had a choice of struggling to make a living from farming or subdivide the land into 4 Hectare lifestyle blocks and sell these. The result of this is where there once was 12 houses in the valley there are now 41 with more blocks yet to be built on. This has happened all around the district.It has been great for repopulating the valley and the rural district in general, however it appears that the sense of community hasn't arrived with the re-population, which feels sad for me when I think that I do not know half of the people that live on the road now. Now we all are racing around madly (and I'm included) making a living, basically just to survive economically with only 2 dairy farms (big ones), most others are working in town.For a district that was settled 160 years ago by the Scottish arriving here via Nova Scotia, I am now the second longest resident of the valley, and I'm not a descendent of the early settlers.Some would call this progress I guess.For me the sense of community has become increasingly important as I get older and begin to realise the significance of the changing world we are all living in.

It's a bit cliche, I realise, but I have been thinking, quite a lot in fact, and for quite a long time too, about how this world can work in a different way.For most of my life I have kept my views fairly close, with only a select few being allowed to hear them. This from the fear of judgement of me as a person for holding such views or opinions.Well, this has just changed, there is something happened inside of me that is in the process of bursting out and that something is my views and opinions about the world in which we live. Maybe I have become old enough to have something to say, maybe I have an opinion, maybe things have just gotten bad enough now and now maybe I don't give so much of a shit to what people think of my views.Anyway this blog is my attempt to find my voice.Over 30 years ago I went farming and one of the main motivations for this was a general dislike of people or more to the point the judgement of people. Being around animals was definitely a safer feeling for me.After about 10 years of relative isolation I travelled, did my big OE; wow, did that open my eyes. NZ although a great country to live in was just a pimple on the backside of the world, be it a very beautiful and natural pimple.When I returned to NZ after about 18 months I realised that I needed to do something with people and this is when the opportunity to work with horses and people presented itself. I can tell you now that I don't know what scared me more, the thought of working with people or the thought of working with horses.To cut a very long story short it was the horses that opened a door for me to find my way back to people again and more importantly a way back to myself.The horses' have taught me and helped me to learn a great many things, way more than I could have dreamt of in my wildest dreams.Lessons from the horse about life and living it, in essence what this blog is about. What we can learn from them and their community or herd, how to create harmony in living together, independence within a group, freedom and responsiblity, the list goes on and continues to grow as I learn more.

The Community Blog

Authors

Ian Benson has lived in this North River Valley for over 30 years now and has seen a lot of change in the community of the valley, the township, the district, the region and the nation. Some of this change I see as positive and some not so.Along with Anke Benson we would like to elicite some change in the way we live, the way we fit into the community as a whole and play our part in the evolution of our global community.